Category: Imperial Court Circular

Gray Matters II: BLOODLINE – A New Republic Costs More Than A Used One

Posted on May 11, 2016by Imperial Court Circular

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There’s been a sense from some fans that The Force Awakens and its background material indicates that the New Republic has been a failure, that all the heroes fought for has been for naught. Not everyone thinks that – Nick previously wrote to take stock of the New Republic as seen in the context of TFA and the Journey to TFA books and his verdict was a positive one. But since then, Bloodline has been released and given us a great deal of context about the dysfunction that paralyzed the New Republic in the years leading up to the film. Sarah discussed the role extremism and partisanship played in impeding the New Republic’s governance, and Sarah, Rocky, and yours truly discussed how these irreconcilable differences stemmed from fear and mistrust. After all that, one might be forgiven for assuming that the rosy view of the New Republic was definitely wrong and that TFA showed the demise of a government that was at best a failure and at worst, doomed. But is that the right lesson to take from Bloodline? We don’t think it is – Bloodline simply showed democracy as it is, warts and all.

As promised with our first “Gray Matters” piece on Lost Stars and its realistic and human portrayal of those who serve the Galactic Empire, here’s our follow-up on how to realistically portray the good guys. And just like the first piece, the article didn’t really come together until Claudia Gray wrote a novel perfectly demonstrating what we wanted to talk about: how democracy is portrayed in Star Wars and why it’s important that it be treated with nuance. As with the first Gray Matters piece, the goal is to make it clear that there isn’t and shouldn’t be a black-and-white sense of the New Republic – complexity and nuance is more interesting than unmitigated success and failure. Read More

Escape Pod: Imperial Defectors and the Rand Ecliptic

Posted on March 30, 2016by Imperial Court Circular

randMoral relativity is hard to do in Star Wars, because it’s a tale of good versus evil. However, sophisticated storytelling expects that things are rarely black and white. Add in the influence of fans, and it’s not surprising that villains end up being quite popular in Star Wars. The Galactic Empire is probably one of the most popular villains in fiction, and so it’s easy to see why there’s an interest in presenting the Empire as a little more nuanced than purely evil. This always runs the risk of whitewashing Imperial atrocities, or presenting the “good Imperial” – the person who is certainly not a Rebel, but also not a bad person. We’re personally always suspect of the idea of the “good Imperial,” because while we very much enjoy reading about Imperials we also don’t want to sacrifice the theming of the Star Wars saga.

The new Star Wars canon has done a good job addressing this issue so far, from realistically portraying how people end up buying into the Imperial system in Lost Stars, to exploring the loss of innocence and seduction of evil in the Servants of the Empire series, to examining the mindset of an Imperial Security Bureau agent in Rebels. At the end of the day though, the people who stick with the Empire are usually either delusional, corrupted, or participants in the Imperial system – at least those who are involved in furthering its goals. But not always. There are certainly the rare Imperials who serve with honor and distinction, and try to refuse the worst orders – even if they’re not “good” compared to the heroes of the saga, they might be good by Imperial standards. But there are also those who realize their decency isn’t compatible with Imperial service, it’s these people we want to talk about today: Imperial defectors.

In the Legends EU, many prominent Rebel characters – including film characters such as Jan Dodonna, Crix Madine, Biggs Darklighter, and Derek “Hobbie” Klivian – began their careers as dutiful Imperial officers. EU mainstays such as Kyle Katarn, Soontir Fel, and Tycho Celchu also started out as Imperial officers. These officers defected to the Rebellion when they realized that the Empire wasn’t living up to its own honorable ideals, often in response to atrocities they were ordered to commit. Biggs and Hobbie defected almost right out of the Academy, taking their ship – the Rand Ecliptic – with them. Imagine what other defectors flew with them – heroic, goodie-two-shoes aren’t the only kind of people who might’ve left the Empire’s service and we’re missing out on good characters if we think that. Lost Stars and Aftermath both gave us examples of flawed, human Imperial officers who defected to the Rebellion – but there’s such storytelling potential in exploring the different types of people who might come to a realization that Imperial service just isn’t for them.

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Evil Takes Many Forms: The Genesis of the First Order

Posted on December 23, 2015by Imperial Court Circular

The-Force-Awakens-Frame[1](needless to say, spoilers for The Force Awakens ensue)

The First Order is the new villain of the Star Wars saga, and at first glance it looks a lot like the old villain. The First Order has the Imperial aesthetic down pat, if a bit further refined with more technological whiz-bang, sleeker starship architecture, and stormtroopers that appear “designed by Apple® in California.” Due to the film’s preference not to overexplain lore, audiences could be forgiven for thinking the Empire was still in charge. But there’s sufficient context in the film – and certainly in the background material – to give people the idea that the First Order is something different, a refashioned iteration of the Empire seeking to get back into power. It’s like the Empire, but different – changed. They’ve got the same trappings, but are something else – more intense, more driven, more fanatical. Some might say that they’re a little more black (cf. white), a little more overtly Nazi, than the Galactic Empire was. They are – but that’s not due to simplified storytelling, but because it’s the natural direction for the First Order to go. We hope to explain why.

During the cantina scene in The Force Awakens, Maz Kanata explains: (paraphrased) “Throughout the ages, evil has taken many forms: the Sith, the Empire, and now the First Order.” These forms of evil track with the enemies of the film trilogies, and while it’s tempting to say that they’re ultimately the same thing (the Sith create the Empire, which in turn lives on in the First Order) that elides the essential differences between them. The forms that evil takes depends on the role of evil in the saga and the context in which evil develops. To characterize these forms with a simple one-word descriptor, let’s describe the forms of evil as subversion, domination, and purification. Now – the villains of Star Wars have a lot more nuance than that, but those three words are a useful roadmap for charting the path from the “phantom menace” of the Sith in the Prequels to the resurgent First Order of the incipient Sequels.

Evil is not isolated to one or two villains, but acts upon the characters (primary or ancillary) in the story. One useful lens of looking at it is the evolution of the iconic white-armored soldiers of the Star Wars galaxy. Clonetroopers are bred to order, and yet develop individuality. Imperial stomtroopers, on the other hand, start out as recruits and conscripts and have their individuality steadily eroded away in the form of dehumanizing numerical designations as if they were automata (Edge of the Galaxy presents stormtroopers as emotionless husks, while the stormtroopers of Twilight Company still embrace humanity underneath their indoctrination). By the time of the First Order, however, early Imperial experiments in raising stormtroopers from birth have come to fruition and people who started out as normal human beings turn into unthinking tools of evil “raised to do one thing.” The Sith subverted a Republic, the Empire dominated a galaxy, and the First Order seeks to purify itself and everything else.

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Not too short for a stormtrooper: Why eBook novelettes are a great idea

Posted on December 9, 2015by Imperial Court Circular

The_Perfect_Weapon_final_cover[1](This is my last piece going up before The Force Awakens, and it’s a little odd to be writing a piece about the future direction of Star Wars publishing with that on the immediate horizon but this piece was prompted by the Journey to the Force Awakens short stories that released last week and what they presage for SW literature. As much as TFA is dominating my thoughts, the franchise is going to continue going full steam ahead right after release with more novels and supplemental materials: the movie’s just the beginning. So with that, I’ll jump back into the pluralis majestatis and get this thing started.)

Star Wars has a long history with short stories. Some of the best EU works ever written were published as short stories in WEG’s Star Wars Adventure Journal, while the Tales From anthologies were commissioned to expand storytelling to the fringe scenes and characters of the original films. Video games such as X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Galactic Battlegrounds came with their own short fiction and the Hyperspace feature of the Official Site allowed members of the Star Wars Fan Club to read exclusive fiction content. Magazines such as Star Wars Gamer and Star Wars Insider also ran fiction, and Insider in particular continues to run short stories in this new canon era.

These short stories really pushed the bounds of the Star Wars narrative by focusing on peripheral characters and storylines that might not have justified or sustained a mainstream novel. The short story format allowed the publishers to take risks, releasing tales that did not need to meet the same marketing calculus that a full novel or novel series might. Publishers were also able to use a larger stable of authors, given that a magazine or anthology could offer many more writing slots than a year-long novel-publishing calendar might. Star Wars short stories expanded the universe in every sense of the term: by focusing on everyday characters, the galaxy just seemed like larger and more vibrant place. There was only ever one problem: these stories were not “available wherever books are sold” as the novels were, and unless one obtained a particular issue of a journal or magazine, it was pretty difficult to get a hold of these stories once they were published. The Tales From anthologies were different, because they were released like novels.The-Crimson-Corsair[1]

We’ve long championed the potential of short stories to tell interesting stories and showcase different authorial talents. Last week’s release of five Journey to The Force Awakens eBook shorts by Delilah S. Dawson and Landry Q. Walker provides an excellent demonstration of how the combination of the short story structure and the eBook format allows Star Wars publishing to have the flexibility to tell great stories and also to have the wide accessibility to reach a larger audience.

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The Secret Academy — the answer to why the Empire fell so quickly (Also: Why you should read Servants of the Empire)

Posted on October 19, 2015by Imperial Court Circular

(As ever, we will endeavor to avoid spoilers – but as usual, this piece is analysis as much as review so we’ll be discussing the plot in vague terms to make the points we’re making)

secretacademyAs the Journey to The Force Awakens campaign kicked off on September 4th, one of the many questions readers started asking was: why is the Empire falling apart so quickly? The obtuse answer is that this is what the story demands, and we’ll learn the full reasons on December 18th. But many of us thought the war would last far longer than in the Expanded Universe, where the Empire was driven out of the Core Worlds as early as five years after Return of the Jedi. Surely this time the war would truly rage on for many many years: but that’s not what happened. Suddenly, the Empire of the EU seemed a lot more solid and formidable. Folks speculated as to the reasons why, such as the collapse of central authority, the unwillingness of the Navy to waste time protecting a symbolic world like Coruscant, defections to the New Republic, etc.

The real question, though, was why nobody was bothering to fight for the Empire? Even discounting propaganda, surely folks might feel under threat by the rebels and would want to defend their way of life? The Alliance/New Republic approach to the war doubtless played no small part in the lack of widespread Imperial resistance on the part of the galactic citizenry (something that we may touch on in our next “Gray Matters” piece), but Imperial collapse signifies a widespread lack of support for the Empire. This is in marked contrast to both Revenge of the Sith – where the Empire was ushered in by thunderous applause – and the old EU, where the Empire had solid support for quite some time.

Jason Fry’s Servants of the Empire books in general and The Secret Academy in particular give us the answer. This series – among many things – explores the true lengths the Empire goes to in order to inculcate loyalty in its subjects, and it shows that the Empire’s attempts at gaining the populace’s loyalty are manipulative at best and outright programmed at worst. The Empire does not inspire devotion or loyalty, it instills it by force. But The Secret Academy shows us that indoctrination through propaganda and misinformation is the gentlest of the Empire’s methods, and it has more sinister ideas in mind for the future of the galactic populace. Edge of the Galaxy already explored the Empire’s exploitation of planets, Rebel in the Ranks illustrated the brutality inherent in Imperial training, and Imperial Justice showed us the dark side of Imperial oppression: but The Secret Academy shows the existential danger posed by the Imperial system and indirectly provides the elusive answer as to why the Empire fell so quickly. Essentially, the Empire doth protest too much: the sheer lengths the Empire goes to shows that even the servants of the Empire aren’t really willing adherents of the system. Read More